Council car allowance may have to change

San Diego 
The San Diego City Council may have to lower or abandon its $9,600 annual auto allowance if it can't justify that the rate is reasonable under the law.

City Attorney Jan Goldsmith called attention to the little-noticed standard in his analysis of a 2006 state law late last month.

In an interview on the subject, he said the council's set amount may fail to meet the standard. He said council members need to start documenting actual auto expenses, and if accepting an allowance, justify a percentage of vehicle use for city business.

“If, for example, a bunch of council members come in there and they show two, three thousand dollars a year . . . in their actual expenses, . . . you use that to help set a flat rate,” Goldsmith said. “You don't set a flat rate of $9,000. Clearly, clearly unreasonable.”

Two out of eight members of the City Council accept the flat allowance, and the others pledged to go without or submit for mileage reimbursement after The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote about the obscure new law last year.

The law requires local elected officials to document expenses before being reimbursed for them, and it led some California cities to drop flat-rate allowances in favor of submitting mileage.

Goldsmith, who took office in December, said it doesn't have to be either/or – cities can pay a flat allowance if it's reasonable.

The next step for council members who want to keep an allowance is to submit mileage, receipts and other information – or explain why any of it is unavailable – by March 15 to establish a new policy and justify a new amount, Goldsmith said.

“A reasonable policy would match expenses,” he said.

Councilman Tony Young, who considers his allowance compensation for the job, said the issue is becoming too much of a distraction. He said the council should take the $9,600 allowance as income, for a boosted annual pay of $85,000.

“The council should stop playing these games with auto allowances and other things that don't really show what the true take-home pay is,” he said.

The council's auto allowance, which is among the highest in the state, has been based on AAA's study of annual driving costs for more than 20 years.

But the AAA benchmark doesn't distinguish between personal and business use. It includes, for instance, a daily commute to and from work, deemed a personal expense by the federal government.

One AAA brochure says: “Because employees who use their own vehicles for company business also may use their vehicles for personal driving, reimbursement should not amount to 100 percent of the total costs.”

Yet the council has awarded itself a total reimbursement of the AAA estimated cost.

Last year the council based its allowance on the automobile association's estimated cost of driving a medium-sized sedan 20,000 miles a year – or about 55 miles every day. The calculations included gas, maintenance, tires, insurance, taxes, fees, finance charges and depreciation.